It’s been twenty or so years since I began using the term SOCKO.  I often worry that it may seem a bit silly or flippant, but I’ve not found a better term to express the impact, newsworthiness and succinctness that audiences of all types need. 

 

Aces, press lines, Qs & As, key messages, mission, vision and value statements don’t do the trick for me.  If they lack impact or are not newsworthy, reporters won’t use them and audiences won’t remember them. Qs & As can go on forever with inflammatory, confidential or hypothetical questions.  Even articles in The Harvard Business Review question whether shop-floor workers in industry have any idea what to do differently after hearing mission, vision and value statements.

 

So, I’m still stuck with SOCKOs, which imply impact and allow me to discuss the communications theories that the five-letter acronym evokes.  This article made the front page of Winning Campaigns and has been reprinted and archived on the magazine’s web site.     

 

In a recent media training session with a senior member of cabinet, the time came to simulate interviews with one of my trainers.  I played good cop, asking the politician to consider what he wanted to say in the 5 to 8 minutes he’d have.

 

The client and staffers talked a bit about policy and goals.  It was an unfocused discussion.  I took a few notes on what the politician and his staff thought they should say.

 

At the end of the interview, I asked the politician to review his own performance:

 

“Good relationship with the journalist.”

 

“I felt positive about it.”

 

“I’m comfortable with what I said.”

 

“Strong performance” (from staff).

 

I pulled out my notes and observed that in the eight or so minutes he had had to speak, he hadn’t got out one single message that he’d planned to.  Jaws dropped.  I then parsed this observation more finely—either your strategy was wrong and those messages should not have been delivered, or your strategy was right but you missed executing it.

 

I’ve developed an acronym to show how to develop a good media clip.  It’s SOCKO.

 

SOCKO

 

I know this acronym evokes a crash or blow in a comic strip, but it doesn’t at all stand for punching reporters who ask you tough questions.  SOCKO does imply impact, but of the emotional or intellectual kind.  A SOCKO is a true, memorable, clear, short statement that encapsulates your position and makes the recipient say “Ah!” or “Oh!” or “Hum!”

 

SOCKO also stands for Single Overriding Communications and Knowledge Objective.  Each word is worth a few sentences in turn.

 

Strategic

 

A message is strategic because you’ve thought about it, practiced it and rehearsed it.  It is your considered opinion on what to say about a topic.  You’ve pondered what others will say in response and your rebuttal—a semantic chess game.  Rehearsal is done out loud with staff and with audio and video recording equipment.  Does anyone really think Richard Nixon thought about the implications of saying “I am not a crook”?  How about George Romney’s “When I came back from Viet Nam, I had just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get when you go over to Viet Nam” (often paraphrased as “I was brainwashed on Viet Nam”).  Or how about John Kerry’s “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it”?

 

Overriding

 

Media operate twenty-four hours a day and thus work at three times the speed of normal life.  Reporters need your clip right now.  They do not want to waste much time on context, background, disclaimers and parenthetical statements.  Get on with it.

 

I ask clients to imagine all they know about a topic.  It’s lots.  Reporters and the public can’t absorb it all.  Now I ask clients to imagine all they know about the topic in the shape of an iceberg.  What’s the fifteen percent that’s floating above the surface?  That’s probably the best clip.  You can then move on to the next most important fifteen percent, the next and the next again.  Just like real icebergs with portions chopped off, they right themselves, and another important fifteen per cent pokes above the surface.  Proficient communicators figure out how to combine chunks to sound like new clips when they’re really reiterating previous sound bites put together in slightly different ways.

 

So, a good clip is the overriding message you want to get out and the overriding aspect of what you want to talk about.

 

Communications

 

There’s about a fifty-percent difference between oral and written communication.  In this article, I don’t have intonation, volume, pausing, pacing or any other tools that I have when speaking.  But when I’m speaking, I don’t have fonts, italics, headings, bold, drop initials or any of the graphic tools that a writer uses to hold your attention.

 

Most candidates spend a lot of time with the written word—bills, reports, letters and so on.  They have to be reminded to shift gears when they speak.

 

Good oral communication features stories, imagery and metaphors.  Sentences are shorter.  For TV, a big part of the clip is your positive body language, eye contact, engagement and open gestures.  For radio it’s pausing and variety in volume, pitch and tone.  In print it’s what makes a good headline or picture.  In all cases it’s a polished, condensed version of normal speech.

 

Many lawmakers think that speaking as if they were a paragraph in a complex contract sounds precise and thorough.  It doesn’t.  Even in legal journals, the advice is to avoid being “hyper-correct.”  Studies of judges and juries show that they tend to discount witnesses’ testimony if it is loaded with jargon and unnecessary big words.

 

So pursuant to the above, I exhort you to peruse your verbosity and expunge polysyllabic utterances.  Keep it simple and conversational.

 

Knowledge

 

Knowledgeable people have facts, figures, data and trends at their disposal.  How often does a political speech or clip in the media say something new?  Not often enough.  This takes research and work.  So does deciding how to cite figures.  A number can be expressed as a percentage, a fraction, or a whole number, or one can show the change over time.  Numbers can be expressed graphically with bar charts, graphs, dispersions, scatter diagrams or box plots.  Choose wisely.

 

Whatever the choice with numbers, research shows that anecdotes and images trump them every time.  Numbers are hard to remember and understand, but a story is memorable.

 

Objective

 

So what’s all this work in aid of?  What’s the objective?  In print the objective is a headline, picture, cutline (underneath the picture) or call-out (a quote culled out of the copy and made larger or bold to create a nice graphic look in a magazine or newspaper).  For radio it’s a sentence or two on the news or talk show that people remember.  On TV it’s the same, but it also could be something you’re doing that looks newsworthy.  That’s often called a photo opportunity, but try to avoid clichés, such as cutting a ribbon or “grip and grin” shows of you shaking hands with someone while you’re not looking at her but grinning like a mad fool at the camera.

 

In all cases you want to be remembered by the audience.  You also want to be interesting and helpful enough to keep the reporters coming back for more.

 

 

I’ve written often about the concerns I have with research techniques.  This column was inspired by my attendance at a focus group.

 

I was just asked to attend some focus groups and I was reminded of the dozen or so reasons I don’t like them.

 

First, rich and busy people usually won’t attend, skewing data to a narrow demographic.  This would taint research in a decent undergraduate social science class.  Worse, focus group companies know where they can get repeat attendees on short notice.  These are often students, the unemployed or at least people who live near the focus group facilities.  All of this taints the data, too.

 

In this particular focus group I feel a twinge as soon as the leader walks in the room.  She is too talkative, as if trying to entertain a client, not conduct research.  Conducting professional scientific research is a learned skill.  Notice I use the term scientific and do not make a distinction with social science.

 

About fifty years ago Heisenberg said the instrument used in a laboratory experiment affects the results of the experiment—the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.  A thermometer used to measure temperature changes the temperature of the thing it’s measuring.  In 1962, Kuhn pointed out that scientists have a tendency to collect data that supports their views and ignore that which conflicts.  He used the term paradigms to describe this phenomenon.  Merton and Feyerabend discussed how science is a value laden pursuit, driven by those performing the science.

 

So the focus group leader is in a difficult position.  Waltzing in like the star of the show, trying to impress, performing for the client behind the two-way mirror or any other false behaviour can make that position untenable and skew the data.

 

A focus group leader should dress and talk one step up from the subjects in the room.  S/he is there for scientific purposes to gather data, not make friends or entertain.

 

Most focus groups begin way too quickly.  The leader should allow discussion to evolve slowly with open ended questions to see what the respondents want to discuss.  Closed, specific questions, especially ones that can be answered with “yes” or “no” or a short sentence won’t reveal as much as an open ended questions encouraging discussion.

 

Closed questions yield what researchers call an aided response.  The questions tell respondents what to talk about.  Open questions yield an unaided response where the respondents can tell researchers what to think about—the way it should be!

 

In the focus group I was in recently, we were testing confidential matters.  But let’s say it was reactions to Candidate X.  One of the first questions was, “What kind of car do you think Candidate X drives?”

 

This sparks a discussion of myriad types of cars.  I’m reminded that some people follow car models more than others.  Some may name one car thinking it’s the sportiest on the market, while another person may name the same model because it represents fuel efficiency, economy or some other attribute.

 

In the end, without knowing what respondents mean by the car models they name, you end up with a mish-mash of information that could mean anything.  “Cadillac” means luxury, high-price, high fuel consumption and perhaps the ability of American industry to compete with anyone on the planet.  Who knows?

 

But if there really were value in the car question, it should have begun in an open ended fashion such as, ”How does Candidate X get around the district or campaign trail?”

 

Respondents might name trains, boats, planes and cars.  If we find out people think the candidate flies around in a private jet, that could be a problem.  If cars are really relevant, after an open discussion of other types of travel, the closed ended question could be asked about what kind of car the candidate uses.

 

In the focus group I watched, one respondent got up on his hind legs and said he didn’t think the candidate used a car.  It takes guts to challenge an authority figure and say the question is wrong.  If a respondent does that, it’s a very powerful message that you could be on the wrong track.

 

Next the leader held up pages from the candidate’s web page, passed them around and asked for a review.  That’s not how people use web pages, so it’s hard to tell what was being tested.

 

Next, the leader passed around literature that the candidate regularly sends out.  The question was, “What do you like about the brochures, householders and other communication?”

 

I have two problems with this line of questioning.  First, it misses the opportunity to find out if anybody remembers getting anything in the mail from the candidate.  People may feel boxed into saying they received and remembered the material, when the most valuable information might be that they didn’t.  Next, what if people hate the literature?  Asking what they like about it, cuts off the discussion about what they don’t like.

 

People like to be cooperative when being paid, so you have to be careful they aren’t so cooperative that you don’t find out what they’re really thinking.

 

Next came the Barbara Walters question.  She was famous for asking an interviewee, “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?”

 

In this session, respondents were shown pictures of all kinds of people—young, old, various races, both genders and so on.  As they are looking at the pictures, the leader asks, “If the candidate’s campaign were a person, what person would it be?”

 

Not only is the question a bit odd, it’s hard to tell what people mean when they pick a picture of a fit, muscular looking man.  Does mean the campaign is intimidating, full of thugs or has staying power for the long run?  Next, respondents start answering questions that weren’t asked.  One picks the construction worker because the candidate comes from a part of the district where there’s lots of construction.  Another picks the young Asian woman because the district is becoming more multi-cultural. Some seem to be picking people they find attractive or would like to be with, not who embody the campaign.  This ends in another mish-mash of unusable information.

 

I innocently asked the client where the pictures came from?  It turns out employees of the research company picked them.  They may use them every session, for all I know.  Regardless, it does not make a lot of sense to me to have respondents judging pictures picked either at random or purposefully by a research company to make their sessions go more smoothly.

 

Next, the leader asks what does the person in the picture do for a living, and what does the person do on weekends?  (I assume the construction worker works in construction).

 

Ironically, after going to all this trouble to stimulate fairly irrelevant discussion, the leader cuts off dialogue by asking if anyone has any final thoughts?  When the leader leaves the room to get more instructions from the client, I listen in to the continuing discussion in the focus group room.  It’s actually a better discussion, unaided by the leader.  One older woman began waxing nostalgic about the district, the party and the candidate.

 

So, what’s the right approach?  There are lots of them.  Credible scientists use several different methods and compare them to obtain more reliable data.  Polls, questionnaires, elite interviews with opinion leaders and lay-elite dialogues to see where there are gaps between those in the know and regular folks can all help.  So can old-fashioned research.  Online databases now make is really easy to search everything from newspapers to academic journals.  For all a campaign knows five distinguished academics and journalists have written 10,000 excellent words on the topic over the years.

 

Focus groups can be helpful, if run properly.  But they also need to be augmented with sound, old-fashioned research, preferably in libraries, surrounded by musty books.

 

 

 

 

I have many concerns about the quality of research conducted in political campaigns, by those governing and by industrialists.  I even see those in the not-for-profit sector spending precious money on unproductive research. 

“Original” research in universities is often only conducted at the doctoral level.  Research that is done often involves relatively unproductive statistical tables or questionnaires that purport to be” scientific”.  Many students find searching through microfilm, microfiche and original texts in libraries to be passé, if they are aware of the technique at all.  This constricted research in universities translates into marginally beneficial or even irrelevant techniques and results in industry and government.      

 

How is it that the best educated generation the world has ever seen is relying on research techniques that would not achieve a pass in a second year social science course in a reputable university?  In government, and in the political campaigns designed to lead to governing, senior managers are making decisions based on flawed methodology.

 

But we are in unstable times when we need excellent public policy and politics.  America is polarized domestically and the European Union is beginning to show signs of eventually having similar economic and political clout in some parts of the world.

 

For those who look to the private sector for leadership and use the refrain of “running the government like a business”—please don’t.  Fully 82% of all mergers and acquisitions in private industry fail to produce new value.  There is a crisis of competence in all sectors, in part because of poor research.

 

Here are the top ten issues and comments on research techniques and challenges faced both in campaigns and then in governing:

 

 

The population is much more sophisticated than they were when the random sample telephone survey was invented.  A telephone call is now an intrusion, especially during dinner time.  Pollsters are experiencing up to 70% refuse rates.  I tell my clients that often the biggest message they are getting is that their constituents refuse to speak to them at all.

 

Compounding the problem is caller ID which tips people off that it’s a pollster calling.  The moment of silence before the questioner begins speaking is a further tip off, as is the robotic reading of questions from a computer screen.

 

Perhaps the biggest challenge is that up to 10% of the population has just one hand-held device or phone—higher in the crucial 18-24 age group.  Many will not participant in phone surveys because they have to pay the air time.

 

People miss-remember dates, events and attitudes—what researchers call “backward and forward telescoping”.   They also tell researchers what they wish had happened, or use answers to researchers’ questions as surrogates for other messages.  The classic example is that far more Americans reported that they voted for President Kennedy after his assassination than could have done so in the closest election the US had had to that date.

 

Social science is too imprecise to determine that 22.3% of people think or do anything—often referred to as “spurious accuracy”.

 

Citizens reserve the right to lie to pollsters and reserve the right to park their votes in the undecided category or tell pollsters they will vote for a party or candidate when they have no intention of doing so, in order to temporarily reward or punish candidates.

 

One joke about polls goes like this:  “If an election were held today, everybody would be really surprised because it’s scheduled for November 4”.  That kind of captures some of the unreality of polls these days.

 

• Focus Groups.

 

Robert K. Merton is the inventor of focus groups.  He also coined the terms “role model” and “self-fulfilling prophecy”.  He disassociated himself from the way practitioners implemented his ideas about focus groups.

 

The dirty little secret about focus groups is the number of times companies rely on semi-professional attendees whom they know will show up on short notice to fulfill a client’s needs.  Students, the disadvantaged and others who need an honorarium or have time on their hands are often overrepresented.

 

There are ways to make focus groups more reliable.  What the Harvard Business Review calls “empathic testing” involves using a product or discussing an issue in real life conditions.  Putting respondents around a board table and having a formal focus group leader ask questions is not a normal life experience or venue and the results will thus be forced and false.

 

Anamatics is similar and involves making the experience realistic and having participants focus on the element to be tested.  Realism in the venue can be addressed by driving respondents around in a van while they listen to radio ads a politician wants tested.  This is closer to how voters would listen to an ad than sitting at a board table.

 

For TV ads, we have stripped rough cut ads into tapes of the actual TV show in which they will appear.  Testing can occur in shopping malls where hundreds or even thousands of people can view the potential ads and react to them.

 

For print ads and even editorial content, we have mocked up the copy and inserted it into real newspapers to see how respondents react.  We don’t tell them what we want them to react to, we first want to know if they care to look at the ad or story at all.  That’s the so-called “unaided” response.  If they don’t look or read, we have some valuable information.  Then we asked them to review the ad and get more valuable information in their “aided” response.

 

Campaigns and sitting politicians use lots of mail.  Direct mail raises money and mobilizes troops.  Newsletters and political “householders” let constituents know what their representative is doing.  But nobody opens the mail or reads a householder while sitting around a boardroom table.  These items should be thrown on the floor in a pile of other mail and magazines to see if anybody bothers to stoop down and pick it up.  If someone does, the next question is whether the political piece is interesting enough to cull out of the pile and read.  If not, that’s a valuable answer in itself.

While on the campaign literature theme, there’s always somebody in political meetings showing a mock up of a brochure or householder who points out that the candidate’s picture or name or other important information is off on the right-hand side “where the eye naturally goes”.  By this time in the meeting, I’m too exhausted from trivia and nonsensical issues to point out that we read from left to right in English, Spanish, French and most other languages prevalent in North America, and only read right to left in Arabic, Persian, and some other languages.  (I wonder where these perceived and received pieces of communication wisdom come from?)

 

With regard to video and TV production, audiences are very sophisticated.  Most people own video cameras and watch TV dozens of hours per week.  Research has shown that focus group attendees will review the production qualities of ads, rather than the content.  To counter this, advertisements can be mocked-up by a graphic artist and one can then test the voice-over or content separately.

 

Candidates can test debate one-liners, still pictures for brochures, slogans and any other communication element, without layers of clutter or testing of extraneous elements.

 

• Graduated Questionnaires.

 

Self-administered questionnaires are not used much anymore, but are a valid technique.  One of the best examples of these is the old Bureau of Broadcast Measurement diaries that were mailed to households to survey radio listening and TV viewing.  People often put down their favourite station, not the one they actually watched most.

 

With telephone or in person surveys, respondents become easily and quickly fatigued with having to choose among:  strongly agree, mildly agree, somewhat agree, agree, mildly disagree, strongly disagree.  What does mildly agree mean, other than the fact that it’s stronger than just agreeing and weaker than strongly agreeing?  How does one compare one person’s strong agreement with another person’s?

 

The best model to determine the weight to put on a respondent’s report is to see if that person actually changes behaviour as a result.  People often report that they will change voting habits, but actually do not.  This makes their threat to do so a surrogate for other matters that should be probed.

 

In industry, it’s the same.  I have a telecommunications client which conducts quarterly research to determine how much its customers like them.  The results show that up to 30% of respondents say they are “agree”, “strongly agree” or “somewhat agree” with the notion of switching service to a new company.  Yet for years the so-called “churn rate”—the rate at which customers actually change telecommunications providers (phones, hand-helds, internet, etc.) is under 3%.

 

It is vital to distinguish between what people actually do and what they say they might do.

 

• Elite Interviews.

 

It may not sound egalitarian these days, but elites are good respondents because of how they became elites—they know their demographic well.  These one-on-one, in-depth interviews can augment focus groups, polling and other techniques.

 

Who’s an elite?  That’s easy.  Ratepayer groups, condominium boards, religious groups, union leaders and even book club busy bodies all rose to the top of their little heap, in part through knowing what their demographic is like.  They can be a great source of information.

 

 

The term, taken from navigation, stands for gathering data from several different sources, or with numerous methodologies.  Where data intersect, results are more reliable.   

 

Researchers have identified several types of triangulation including:  within-method, between-method, data, investigator, theory and methodological triangulation.  Within-method means two separate polls, perhaps by different companies that say the same thing.  Between method might be a poll and a focus group that produce similar results.  Data triangulation might involve qualitative or quantitative results that are much the same.  If several investigators find out the same thing, that’s triangulation.  Theory triangulation might involve a psychological and sociological explanation of behavior.  Finally, these days, using mixed methods—both qualitative and quantitative—is increasingly the norm to avoid the errors that each alone can produce.

 

• Mixed methods.

 

The distinction between qualitative and quantitative data has been blurred for at least fifty years.  Few branches of any science have the predictability of Newtonian physics.  Current thinking is to engage in a mixture of methodologies, mentioned above.  So, a reproducible poll with a large sample that claims to be “scientifically” accurate might be cross referenced with qualitative focus groups, elite interviews and such that plumb small samples more deeply.          

 

• Question formulation.

 

Average People don’t speak the way telephone researchers do, or the way those who write questions think they should.    It’s hard to imagine anyone constructing a questionnaire where a response could be “some good” which is a common expression in the Canadian Maritimes, or “awesome” as is currently popular.  The California “Valley Girl” response of “gag me with a spoon” was probably not used, even in its hay-day.

 

• Telephone interviewers.

 

In addition to the long pause, script reading and intrusion, some companies balk at long distance charges, skewing data to urban respondents.  For decades, first year social scientists have been warned that telephone surveys obviously only gather information from those with telephones.  Triangulation is the antidote.

 

 

Social scientists are supposed to keep notes, tapes and a reflexive diary to examine themselves as a scientific instrument while they are examining other people or issues.  Commercial researchers would rarely do this.  

 

• The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

 

The use of a particular research instrument has an effect on the outcome of the research.  Heisenberg stated, “[o]n the level of molecular research, the presence of the experimenter is certain to affect the results in a way which cannot be measured”.

 

The mere fact that a pollster calls up respondents has such affect.  Asking about certain topics that the respondent might not be concerned with, puts that matter on the public agenda.  Moreover, researchers cannot control for the myriad other variables in that respondent’s life.

 

In the end, perhaps my premise is flawed.  Perhaps we are not the best educated generation the world has ever seen.  We have more degrees and a multiplicity of choices in methods, but may lack the clarity and professionalism of previous generations.  Pity, we need that clarity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We often assume the police, fire, EMS, mayor, and other first responders are fulfilling their duties to keep us safe.

 

But according to my studies of plans from the top 100 English-speaking cities in the world, this isn’t always the case.

 

Many of our cities are in danger from their own emergency plans which sometimes feature pages of jargon, acronyms, missing appendices, irrelevant lists of contributors, and wishful thinking.

 

Researchers in the field call them “fantasy plans,” relying on public transit, private cars, and even expertise and help that often doesn’t really exist.  Up to 56% of urbanites don’t have cars, and often the remedies listed in crisis plans turn out not to exist. In fact, some evacuation orders have killed more people than the emergency did.  Contra-flow for evacuations, with all roads leading out, has been called potentially life-threatening by researchers.  

 

Where does San Francisco fit in?

 

San Francisco has two main emergency plans: the All-Hazards Strategic Plan and the Hazard Mitigation Plan

 

The biggest strength of San Francisco’s All-Hazards Strategic Plan is the emphases on a comprehensive training program for city workers, the use of volunteers, and social media.

 

But the All-Hazards plan was last updated six years before I studied it, and the plan has not followed the maintenance schedule set for it. Moreover, when I studied it, I found myself wondering whether anyone is really safer as a result of reading San Francisco’s statements describing how the plan was developed or what the visions, missions, and guiding principles of it are. It’s hard to see how these help anyone prepare for an emergency, but they take up about a quarter of the plan.

 

The Hazard Mitigation Plan is different. It’s newer that the All-Hazards plan. But it has some of the same problems.

 

The Hazard Mitigation Plan is full of very general statements and is often overly preoccupied with semantics definitions. The section on “seismic hazards,” for example is mostly about distinguishing earthquakes from landslides and tsunamis. A brief history of the effect of those events on San Francisco follows. But I could find no procedures describing specifically what to do in the even of those emergencies.  How does it help  victims to be absolutely sure they are being swept away by a landslide versus a tsunami or earthquake?

 

It looks as though San Francisco’s plans were not intended for the general public. They offer hardly any information on individualized, micro-level measures that citizens can take to prepare themselves to deal with emergencies.

 

No city’s crisis plan is perfect. But a good plan can mean the difference between a well-handled crisis and disaster which can cost lives.

 

Some other cities’ emergency plans do have something serious to say — Boston’s climate change study, Kansas City’s dealing with pets, for whom residents will risk their lives, and Richmond, B.C.’s links to great information on personal preparedness. These are just some of the elements that stand out and which could be duplicated by other cities.

 

If San Francisco or any other city lacks the money or time to write a better plan, the best advice from publicly available plans could be cut and paste it into a better document than is on most websites in North America.

 

Some of the plans, including San Francisco’s may have been updated in the months since I read them. No plan will ever be able to foresee every form disaster can take, so it’s important to be flexible and learn from the experiences of other cities.  But the main focus should be on useful, clear information for the average citizen.  

 

Every now and then the topic of earthquakes comes up in Vancouver.  The most recent event was the 4.8 quake on 29 December, 2015.  I have worked on the topic of earthquakes for federal authorities for some years and continue to follow the issue.

Vancouver’s emergency planning documents put the risk of an earthquake in perspective.  They note that 60% of Vancouver’s building stock was built before seismic building codes.   There’s been no damaging earthquake in modern times and so all these buildings are vulnerable. 

Interestingly, my father was partly responsible for construction of one of the first earthquake resistant buildings in Vancouver — 200 Granville Square.  I remember first hearing about earthquakes when I lived in Burnaby in the late 1960s.  I was a young teenager and my father was General Manager of “Project 200”, an early attempt to revamp the waterfront.  Nobody played nicely, not even consortium members Woodwords, Canadian Pacific, Grosvenor Lang, or Sears.  City planners didn’t react quickly or lead the discussion, and neither the federal nor provincial government seemed interested.  Project 200 is another story—a missed opportunity.  But the earthquake resistant building is highly relevant today.

 

There was a lot made about Granville Square.  It was among the first density transfers of its kind in North America with my father having to help obtain a mortgage for the air above the CP railway tracks.  Usually mortgages are for land and buildings, but this building was built on stilts above the CP railway tracks. 

While this deal was being done and the building designed, my father would regale us at the dinner table about his day at work.  One day it was the promotional copy that told of the “giant pedestrian mall” that would abut Granville Square.  “And where will you find the giant pedestrians?” I asked.  Another night my father toyed with some promotional copy that would tell the story of Granville Square being the only building left standing after a major earthquake.  He thought it would be fun to tell potential tenants that they’d be able to work in peace, quiet, and safety, if only they could climb over the rubble of all the other buildings in the city.

 

In those days, earthquake-proofing a building meant constructing sockets, lined with neoprene on which concrete pillars stood, which in turn held up the building.  My father said he had no idea what neoprene ended up like after he’d put a building weighing many hundreds of tonnes on top of it.  He certainly had no idea how to perform maintenance on the assembly after construction.

 

Now, Vancouver’s plan goes well beyond building materials. Memoranda of Understanding with other Canadian cities are now part of the plan in order to ensure rapid deployment of resources after a disaster.  Similarly, the Vancouverites are recommended to reduce dependency on electricity and natural gas grids and develop back-up power sources. Even if buildings are still standing after an earthquake, supply lines and energy infrastructure might be severely damaged or destroyed.

 

Even the best-designed earthquake-proof building might need to be evacuated in case of fire or other emergency. This is why Vancouver’s plan requires buildings’ structural drawings and fire plans to be copied and stored centrally in order to speed-up assessment of complex and high occupancy dwellings.

There’s more to be done in Vancouver and neighbouring cities.  Some have designated disaster routes (DDRs) and others don’t.  Some link to useful provincial government preparedness documents, and others don’t. We’ve never sure how many individual citizens are well prepared and would rather not find out after an earthquake.   

“If you see something, say something.” It’s a trademark slogan of the US Department of Homeland Security that we in North America have heard and seen often. You can find it in railway stations and bus terminals all over the USA, often accompanied by a graphic of a large eye or a phone number for reporting suspicious objects or behaviour.  This slogan has even made it into presidential speeches.

 

This campaign is meant to instill vigilance. Critics, though, claim that it promotes paranoia and fires up irrational fears. Both may be true.

 

Either way, does it actually work? It’s up to police to investigate reports that come to them. But are ordinary citizens capable of spotting and reporting suspicious items or people so that police can do their jobs?

 

Leeds in the United Kingdom has among the most effective and realistic approaches in the world.

 

In researching my book Safer Cities of the Future, I discovered that many urban emergency plans are inadequate and that discussion of suspicious activity is usually vague and insubstantial.  What are we to look for and whom should we tell?

 

The “See Something, Say Something” campaign offers little direction.  It refers to “a vehicle parked in an unusual location,” unattended packages, or “other out-of-the-ordinary situations.” But none of these things is well defined. How can American cities count on their citizens to report suspicious things with only this level of vague direction?

 

This is why I was so intrigued by Leeds City Council’s campaign called “If You Suspect It, Report It.” This campaign involves specific and detailed descriptions of suspicious behaviours and items.

 

What’s a “suspicious package?”  Leeds is taking no chances.  It isn’t relying on diverse citizens guessing at the definition.  There is a detailed description and even pictures of what a suspicious package looks like.  It’s unusually heavy, tied up with string, oddly shaped or lopsided, hand addressed, with too much postage and perhaps even leaking oil.  There are instructions and a checklist for businesses and mailrooms advising processing all in-coming mail at one place only, training and briefing mailroom staff, and ensuring that workers have protective equipment such as latex gloves and face masks.

 

And what’s a terrorist look like.  What’s a terrorist’s daily routine?  What are we looking for?  A section of Leeds’ plan is called “Reconnaissance and vigilance at work.” This includes warning about persons with large quantities of mobile phones, people who buy large amounts of chemical products for no obvious reason, or who have multiple pieces of identification.  Does how and where they live raise suspicions, or how they use bank machines?

 

Business are advised to keep proper audit trails for all aspects of business, to check employees’ references carefully, and to keep computer systems secure – in other words clear and specific proactive, as opposed to reactive, measures.

 

Very few, if any other urban emergency plans studied are this specific.  Only Louisville, Kentucky advises citizens to be extra careful on special anniversaries—the Roe v Wade Supreme Court abortion decision, the anniversary of the storming of the religious compound in Waco Texas, the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, tax freedom day, and such.  These are uniquely American milestones, but there are similar ones in other cultures.

 

It’s not a bad idea to take emergency preparedness right into our families and homes.  When teenagers start driving, parents aren’t content to hand over the car keys with the advice “drive carefully.”  Most parents get specific—“don’t speed…keep eyes on the road…both hands on the wheel…pull over if tired” and so on.  Cities emergency plans need to be more like thoughtful parents, rather than conduits for advertising slogans.  Leeds proves this is both possible and the safe route to go.  

Last year I was interviewed by CBC Fredericton on their surprising lack of emergency planning. The province’s three major cities need to make major improvements in their emergency plans. This is crucial stuff

Allan Bonner, a crisis management consultant, says the province’s three major cities need to make major improvements in their emergency plans. (CBC)
An expert in disaster management gives Fredericton a failing grade when it comes to emergency response plans, and he says Moncton and Saint John aren’t much better.
He says Fredericton’s emergency preparedness website has links to federal and provincial sites, but lacks specifics.
“It’s a failing grade,” said Bonner.
He says he expected more guidance, especially about evacuation plans in the event of a disaster.
For example, “In other cities they have the number of buses, the number of bus drivers, the capacity of the public transit system,” said Bonner.
Fredericton city councillor Bruce Grandy said via email that, speaking for himself, the city could do more.
“I know we have some plans at the city and we connect to the plans the province has, but it never hurts for the city to have a more comprehensive look at the gaps and other areas.”
Moncton, Saint John get a passing grade
Bonner says he would give Moncton a C-plus for personal preparedness. He says the city’s emergency preparedness site includes useful information, such as what to pack in a “Go-bag” in case of the need for a swift evacuation.
However, he points out that Moncton’s municipal emergencies measures plan includes only an executive summary. He said the larger plan should be made public.
“I’d like to see more concrete direction to people in Moncton on where to go, what to do,” said Bonner.
Isabelle LeBlanc, a spokesperson for the City of Moncton, says portions of the plan are not made public for security reasons.
Bonner gave the Saint John emergency management website a grade of C, saying it includes no mention of Point Lepreau. the oil refinery, or climate change.

“I used to live in Saint John and I was expecting some reference to the Point Lepreau nuclear plant,” he said, pointing out that other jurisdictions with nuclear power plants have elaborate evacuation plans.
In fact, the province has a comprehensive EMO website that includes information on nuclear safety and in November completed Operation Intrepid, a nuclear emergency preparedness exercise.
Bonner says that kind of information needs to be on the Saint John city website in detail.
CBC News reached out to the City of Saint John for comment, but has not received a response.

 

Originally posted here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/emergency-planning-moncton-fredericton-1.3388651

 

In 1967 Singer/Songwriter Scott MacKenzie (Philip Wallach Blondheim) gave some advice that may still hold.  “If you’re going to San Francisco/Be sure to wear/Some flowers in your hair.”  I did go, several times.  I dined at the Cliff House, Fisherman’s Wharf, and put a quarter in the human jukebox.  The human jukebox occupied a very tall cardboard box and would raise the cardboard flap and blow a tune on his trumpet when called upon.    

MacKenzie sang his advice after being a member of the Journeymen during the folk era, the group that included his mum’s friend John Phillips.  Phillips wrote and co-produced San Francisco before moving on to The Mamas and the Papas.  MacKenzie wrote for Anne Murray.  Phillips and MacKenzie reunited in the 1980s in a new Mamas and Papas and to write and produce Kokomo for the Beach Boys.   

That was a while ago. But today I’d wear red if I were going to Kansas City, Missouri.  The reason is their START program.  This stands for Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment.  Volunteers will be conducting triage at the scene of an urban emergency using a color-coded system.  From the bottom up, Green stands for a minor injury, Yellow means attention can be delayed, Red requires immediate attention and Black is for Deceased.  

I say volunteers because in an emergency, as in war, everybody gets promoted one rank.  It will no doubt be someone’s intention to have trained medical personnel conduct triage, but they will end up providing actual medical treatment, not assessment.  A range of volunteers, medical students, yoga instructors and others will be doing triage—believe me.

Will they know what a dead person looks like?  Do you?  I am not sure I can distinguish a dead person from someone in extreme shock or a coma.  Years ago I saw people in catatonic trances before medication all but made the condition disappear.  They looked dead, but weren’t.  I don’t want to bet my life that a well-meaning volunteer with no medical training in Kansas City can.  So, I’ll wear red, signalling I need immediate attention and am not dead.  

In Houston they too have a triage guideline that I don’t want to be part of.  Black is also the category you don’t want to be in.  But in Houston there are several levels of dead—cardiac arrest, obviously deceased, and severe multiple blunt trauma non-survivable. That last category is probably more accurately termed ‘almost’ dead to be precise.  By deceased, Houston plan writers also mean “Non-Urgent.”  What an ‘urgent’ death might be is not stated.     

Speaking of the color black, as in the Black Death, San Francisco uses this color to signify the worst kind of emergency needing immediate attention.  So if this city is in the category “black” it’s a clue to send all possible assistance.  If a person in Houston or Kansas City is the category “black” that means give them no assistance—there’s no point.  

Perhaps on second thought I’ll wear a sign that says, “I’m not dead…really.”

Birmingham seems almost alone among urban emergency plans studied in its reference to the need for an emergency mortuary.  But that’s a reality check for urban emergency planners and the people who will have to use the plans they write.

There will be death–death of pets, livestock, and people.  Traumatic as this will be, the public health implications and logistical challenges will be an equal or greater challenge.  Some have talked about pre-arranged agreements with undertakers.  Others think of using hockey and curling rinks to store bodies.  Kansas City’s pet-plan is about the most comprehensive and speaks of incinerators and crematoriums.  

This is not pleasant.  But not planning for the unpleasant is worse.      

2007: Conrad Black is convicted in U.S. District Court in Chicago of mail and wire fraud and obstruction of justice. The charges related to diverting funds due to Hollinger International for personal benefit, and to Black and his chauffeur removing documents from Hollinger offices in violation of a court order prohibiting removal.

Political Conventions – Lordly Body Language

1991: Gwich’in people of Mackenzie Delta settle a land claim, getting 15,000 square kilometres of land and $75 million. This is the first regional settlement with northern native groups.

For more on negotiations: Buy ‘Tough Love – Power, Culture and diversity in Negotiations, Mediation & Conflict Resolution’

1968: the Hong Kong Flu pandemic begins. It would go on to kill 1 million people worldwide.

An Ounce of Prevention – On Pandemics

An Ounce of Prevention – Black Death

2010: Seven former employees of Union Carbide’s Indian subsidiary, including the former chairman, are convicted in India of causing death by negligence in the Bhopal Disaster, and are sentenced to 2 years imprisonment and a fine of about $2000 each, the maximum under the law.

An Ounce of Prevention – Bhopal

1999: Bernard Lord, at the age of 33, leads his New Brunswick Progressive Conservative Party to a surprise landslide victory in the provincial election, winning 44 of 55 seats in the legislature.

1962: A massive earthquake devastates the town of Port Royal in Jamaica, killing about 3,000 people. Many of the buildings where the 6,500 residents lived and worked were constructed right over the water. Thousands more died in the following weeks due to sickness and injury. Aftershocks discouraged the survivors from rebuilding Port Royal. Instead, the city of Kingston was built.